[education & training] project helps candidates succeed on abpn exam

APA wants to help candidates for certification by the American Board of Psychiatry and Neurology prepare for their exams, especially when it's not the candidate's first try.

Next month APA will sponsor for the second consecutive year a pilot project to help candidates who have failed the oral examination component of the psychiatry board certification exam more than once. The project allows candidates the opportunity to take an oral test similar to that offered in the board certification exam—including a live patient interview and oral presentation—in front of “examiners” who have served as examiners during the real thing.

Candidates taking the pilot-project test will be told whether they pass or fail and— most importantly—if they fail, they are told why they did so.

Deborah Hales, M.D., director of APA's Department of Education and Career Development, said that the APA program does not include remediation strategies. Candidates are encouraged, however, to use the information that examiners give them to prepare for the real certification examination.

But Hales said that information can be crucial, providing a kind of“ looking glass” for candidates to polish the blemishes in their performance when it comes time for the real thing, an ordeal that is typically fraught with anxiety.

Of the 24 candidates who took part in the pilot project last year—all of whom had failed the oral examination more than once—half went on to pass the board and receive their certification.

Next month's “test” will take place on Saturday, October 29, at the State University of New York, Downstate Medical Center in Brooklyn.

Hales told Psychiatric News that data from the American Board of Psychiatry and Neurology indicate that the failure rate on the Part II oral exam rate is high—as much as 50 percent. And it appears that candidates who fail the exam more than once are at high risk of failing it multiple times.In addition, many of them are candidates who received passing scores of the Board to review progress. Thus, a secondary objective of PBL is to begin collecting data on factors that can, it is likely that people will fail the exam.